


The Right to Thursdays

by skuldchan



Series: 極神主夫譜：The Divine Art of the Househusband [4]
Category: HIStory3 - 圈套 | HIStory3: Trapped
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Jack is an insanely good cook, Jack the Mercenary Househusband, M/M, Mercenary Househusband Hijnks, Post-Canon, The one with the food truck competition, or possibly the one inspired by Food Wars/Shokugeki no Soma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-11 23:43:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20554640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuldchan/pseuds/skuldchan
Summary: Jack gets embroiled in a turf war, which quickly escalates into a head-on confrontation, right in front of the police station.





	The Right to Thursdays

“You’ve got a lot of guts comin’ onto my turf, Jack.”

Jack smirked, and stuck his hands into the pocket of his leather jacket, fingering the butterfly knife he still kept there, more out of habit than anything else. “I’m not sure you get to call this your turf, Mr. Ji.” He gestured at their present location, the corner of the parking lot in front of the police station.

Mr. Ji was a broad-shouldered, pot-bellied tower of a man with a buzz cut who had once worked as a bouncer at a few of Taipei’s triad-linked nightclubs. He narrowed his eyes. “I got here first,” he growled, advancing two steps toward Jack. “Fair and square.”

“There’s more than enough space for the two of us today,” replied Jack reasonably, not at all intimidated by the closing proximity of Mr. Ji or the butcher’s knife the other man held in his right hand. 

“It’s not about the space,” Ji spat, glaring at Jack. “They say you’ve gone legit, but that permit don’t give you license to come here and steal my business!”

Jack spread his hands wide, innocently showing Ji that he had deliberately chosen not to brandish his own weapon in return. “It’s a free country. I’m just here ’cause of my man.”

Ji snorted. “If that were true, you wouldn’t have brought the whole kitchen sink with you.” He narrowed his eyes at the gaily painted yellow vintage Volkswagen Bus that Jack had parked a few paces away. “Get your ass back to Fridays. Today is Thursday, and that means it’s my day.”

“But Zhao Zi has tomorrow off,” Jack explained patiently. “So I have to be here today to feed him.”

“I don’t care what the reason is, you lay off my land.” Mr. Ji strode forward, stopping only when he was close enough to stare menacingly down at Jack. 

Jack returned the man’s gaze evenly, his face tilted upward to regard Ji, who was half a head taller than he was. He continued to smile mildly, even when Ji reached forward with an index finger to prod him squarely in the chest. An ordinary person would have blanched from angry aura that the looming Mr. Ji radiated—his face flushed red and his nostrils flared like a charging bull’s—but Jack shifted not an inch. He wondered if Mr. Ji would have thought twice about poking him, if the man knew how just easily and quickly Jack could break that finger.

“If you don’t move in the next minute, I’m gonna think you wanna have a go at me,” the taller man growled. “You wanna throw down, punk?”

“Maybe I do,” said Jack, amused at how easy it was to rile him up. 

“You wanna do it here, huh? In full view of the police?”

Jack’s smirk widened. “Are we going to keep talking, or are we going to start cooking?”

Mr. Ji harrumphed. “You think you can take me, huh? You might come close if you practiced for another hundred years.”

“How about we let the volume of our business be the judge of that?”

Red-faced, Mr. Ji spat again, his wad of spittle sizzling on the pavement next to Jack’s foot. How hygienic. 

“Fine!” Ji bellowed, and stormed back to his food truck, charmingly named Master Ji’s Golden Chicken.

* * *

Looks of surprise greeted Jack as the denizens of the police station trickled outside for lunch, particularly those in Unit Three of the Criminal Investigation Division. 

“We’re spoiled for choice today,” said Jun Wei as he approached Jack’s truck. “Are you going to start coming two days a week now?” he added hopefully, staring hungrily at Jack’s menu of five different varieties of buns, both savory and sweet. He apparently was having trouble deciding what he wanted.

“Nah, I’m just here today because Zhao Zi is off tomorrow,” Jack replied, hardly glancing up from flattening out his second batch of dough with a rolling pin, while the aroma of the first batch wafted from the bamboo steamers behind him. “Since we’re going on a trip to the hot springs tomorrow, I thought I’d surprise him with lunch today.”

Jun Wei couldn’t quite keep the look of disappointment off his face, though it was swiftly replaced with one of avarice as he caught a whiff of the char siu pork belly filling that Jack was retrieving from the oven.

“Speaking of which…” Jack prompted, snapping Ah-Jun out of a brief, food-induced reverie.

“He’s running overtime in a meeting with Counterterrorism,” Jun Wei replied. “Should be out soon,” and he smiled a little nervously, not liking to be the bearer of bad news to Jack.

Jack paused in the midst of his work and glanced up, allowing himself a small smile before he leveled a stern stare at Ah-Jun. “You’d better make sure he makes it out in time for lunch,” he said slowly.

“Yes, sir!” Jun Wei squeaked. 

Jack turned quickly, hiding a snicker in a cloud of steam as he lifted the lid off the bao dough to check on its progress. His brows were still lifted in amusement as he took Jun Wei’s order of the bulgogi kimchi bao, giving the detective a wink. Jun Wei nodded quickly, with profuse promises to bring Zhao Zi right out. Jack watched as Ah-Jun scurried obediently back inside the precinct.

* * *

“Jack!”

Zhao Zi bounded out of the station’s sliding glass doors and across the parking lot with such speed that someone who didn’t know him and Jack might have guessed that they hadn’t seen each other for four months, when in fact it had been closer to four hours. “I didn’t know you were coming!” 

The line in front of Baos for My Babe parted to let Jack’s boyfriend through. They all knew the unspoken rule of Jack’s food truck—Zhao Zi always got served first.

“I can’t be here for you tomorrow, so I’m here for you today,” replied Jack cheerily, loudly enough for Mr. Ji, in the truck opposite his, to hear.

His rival chef glared at him balefully for stealing several of his Thursday regulars, Zhao Zi included. Zhao Zi didn’t normally get a bento on Thursdays, because it was chicken day. Well, not today. 

“You’re such a sap,” Zhao Zi groaned, though the grin on his face grew even wider than before. “And the name of your truck is cheesy.”

Jack chuckled. “I think it’s appropriate. Who am I really here for, if not you?” 

Zhao Zi blushed sheepishly, nevertheless pleased that he was the eponymous ‘babe’ of the bubblegum pink letters splashed across the side of Jack’s truck. “I’m hungry,” he said with an impish grin, gathering enough composure in front of Jack’s assembled customers to tease back. “Are you gonna give me something to eat?”

Jack laughed as Zhao Zi rose suggestively onto the tips of his toes. Jack leaned out of the truck to meet him in a quick, chaste kiss. They parted all too quickly, Zhao Zi shooting him the type of earnest smile that made it feel like he ought to see a cardiologist and get his heart checked out for skipping so many beats. Jack ducked back into the truck, and a few moments later emerged with his boyfriend's lunch of five buns, one from each item off his menu.

“I guess I can’t get you for false advertising,” Zhao Zi said, closing his eyes blissfully as he inhaled the aroma rising from his buns. Jack tried not to think about how alluring his boyfriend’s lips looked just then, and how badly he wanted to leap out, gather Zhao Zi in his arms, and kiss him again, even harder. In front of everyone. 

Alas, a hungry Zhao Zi was a grumpy Zhao Zi, so Jack went back his orders and let his boyfriend wolf down his midday meal. Zhao Zi hung around the truck as he ate, chatting with the customers as Jack worked his way along the queue. 

As the hour wore on, the crowd began to thin down to a trickle of folk staggering out of late meetings, but Zhao Zi continued to hover in the proximity of Jack’s truck, reluctant to go back into the station. 

“Hey, I’ve noticed that Mr. Ji’s been giving you some nasty looks,” Zhao Zi said.

“I’m sure he is,” Jack replied, mixing up another bowl of lotus seed and pineapple paste, just enough to carry him until the end of lunch.

Zhao Zi frowned. “Is he pissed off about something? What’s going on?” 

“He thinks I’m treading on his territory and trying to steal his regulars.”

“He seems to be doing decent business to me,” Zhao Zi remarked.

Jack’s brows rose. “How much business?” he asked innocently.

Zhao Zi shrugged. “About as much as you, I think, though it’s hard to tell for sure.”

“Mm,” Jack murmured noncommittally and pursed his lips.

Zhao Zi scoffed. “What, are you guys competing or something?”

Jack blinked, surprised that Zhao Zi had guessed in one. Was it that obvious?

Zhao Zi guffawed in the silence of Jack’s pause. “No!” he gasped. “You two actually are competing! What do you get if you win?” 

“The satisfaction of being the better food truck, of course.”

Zhao Zi smiled, propping his elbows on the edge of the metal countertop that folded from the truck. He regarded Jack adoringly. “You don’t have to do that. You know I’m always gonna eat from you.” 

Jack had the feeling that Zhao Zi was not completely oblivious to the effect his mere presence had on him. It would probably not be very hygienic to grab him by the lapels of his flannel shirt and haul him up for another kiss, Jack supposed, though he was sorely tempted to thoroughly violate health and safety code with lots of tongue. Jack managed to refrain, but only barely.

“I know,” he replied, resisting his boyfriend’s flirtatious overture. All the better to have a sexually frustrated Zhao Zi to himself in the privacy of their bedroom tonight. “But I wouldn’t want you to settle for second best.”

“No matter what, you’ll always be first in my book,” Zhao Zi replied. “Or my blog, rather. Wait! I should cover this contest on my blog!”

Zhao Zi had been running a food blog for the past couple of months. He had started it because he’d lost a bet with Yu Qi, but had kept it going because it was fun, and it was a good excuse to go on dates with Jack. It was actually fairly thorough in its assessment of the restaurants, cafes, and food trucks in the vicinity of the precinct, and had managed to achieve a fair amount of notoriety within Unit Three and the other divisions housed at the station. 

It was now known amongst the local food trucks that Zhao Zi’s reviews could make or break their bottom line, and Jack’s truck had drawn a fair amount of ire from the rest of them because Zhao Zi rated his cooking so overwhelmingly positive. The blog made it crystal clear, with its effusive declarations of ardor, that Zhao Zi’s opinion was biased when it came to the menu at Baos for My Babe, but that disclosure didn’t seem to make a difference to the other food trucks, who had started to regard Jack as less of a charming oddity amongst them, and more as competition. 

“I don’t think that’s a good—” Jack began, but Zhao Zi had already bounced off to Master Ji’s Golden Chicken. 

Jack expected Mr. Ji to scowl at Zhao Zi, as he scowled cantankerously at most of his customers, but instead, Ji was all jolly laughter and smiles as Zhao Zi chatted with him animatedly. The power of the food critic in action, Jack thought wryly, as Zhao Zi ordered the Golden Chicken Sampler and devoured it as if he hadn’t had a full square meal already.

* * *

It was well past two o’clock in the afternoon by the time that Jack finally closed up shop and counted his sales. He didn’t normally keep a precise tally of his orders, because he wasn’t really running a business. The food truck thing was a smart way to feed Zhao Zi and also spend some time together during his lunch hour once a week. Jack couldn’t give a rat’s ass whether he balanced the books at the end of the day—and he normally didn’t— which was probably another reason why the other food trucks despised him. He was stealing their business, and he wasn’t even really trying to make a living, which just added insult to injury. But that was their problem, not his. 

“Sixty-five orders,” Jack reported, as he leapt out of the van and sauntered toward Mr. Ji’s truck. “Not counting Zhao Zi, of course.”

Opposite him, Ji was similarly closing down, wiping vigorously at his steel counters with a dishrag. “Hmph,” the man snorted, and then muttered something under his breath that Jack couldn’t catch, maybe something about barely breaking even. “Sixty-five,” Mr. Ji growled, clearly not pleased by having tied with Jack’s total.

Jack gazed at the man, trying to evaluate whether he was lying, but Ji had stopped in the middle of his cleaning, and regarded Jack with a steady, scornful look. 

“What’s the tiebreaker, then?” Jack asked. 

“Chef’s concession,“ Ji grunted.

How funny that Mr. Ji would assume he would know what that meant, Jack thought with a smile. 

“Your best dish against mine,” the man clarified after a period of silence. “If our customers aren’t going to decide for us, then we’ll have to decide for ourselves. A real contest.” 

Ah. Jack considered the proposal, finding it rather elegant in its simplicity. Mr. Ji’s goal was to get him to concede that the other man ran the better food truck, and how better to force that assent than to make Jack taste the golden chicken himself? Jack could always lie, tell Mr. Ji his food wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be, but after tasting the man’s cooking for himself, he would always know the truth in his heart of hearts. He would know, and Ji would know. Ji was not afraid of Jack stealing his recipe either, for was imitation not the sincerest form of flattery? It wouldn’t necessarily translate into sales, but if Jack added elements of Mr. Ji’s cooking to his menu, it would again count as Ji’s victory.

Jack smiled. “I accept.” 

Ji nodded. He had put away his rag and pulled out a freshly washed cutting board. “You have fifteen minutes,” he intoned solemnly. 

That was ages in food truck time. Jack went back to his truck.

They exchanged no banter, no barbs as they put their heads down and cooked. Jack fired the gas back up and pulled out the remnants of the dough he had prepped in the morning, remoistening it with few drops of warm water and swirling in a generous stream of honey. His santoku knife moved in swift, precise strokes, carving up a piece of chicken thigh from the fridge into a neat, regular dice. He threw that into a bowl and mixed it with spices and a marinade that filled the truck with the scent of lime juice and chopped garlic. He added to the marinade a scoop of chipotle chilis in adobo sauce that he’d had to call up an old friend in Los Angeles to procure. That was how he was using his favors nowadays.

There was enough food for here for Mr. Ji to sample, and a little extra on the side. Zhao Zi would never say no to a mid-afternoon snack, Jack reasoned, and it gave him an excuse to go into the precinct for a goodbye kiss before going home for the afternoon. Jack imagined the look of surprised delight on his boyfriend’s face and decided to make two orders. 

Ji was already waiting for him by the time the clock ran down, just as Jack was scattering the last of the chopped cilantro over the stuffing to his bao.

Jack smirked as he noticed Mr. Ji frowning at his dish, his interest piqued by the unusual aroma.

Jack stepped out of the rear of his van, offering his rival chef the courtesy of meeting on common ground. He offered Mr. Ji what he considered the most fun item off his menu, certainly considered unusual for the Taiwanese palate. Was it his best? Jack wasn’t sure of that, but it was close enough. 

Mr. Ji took a long look at it as he accepted the paper plate. “Chicken?” he remarked. “You cheeky bastard.”

Jack smiled back. That he had picked the one chicken dish from his menu had been entirely intentional.

He accepted in return a styrofoam container of chicken over rice. It was Three Cup Chicken, one of the most recognizable dishes of traditional Taiwanese cuisine. He remembered what what Zhao Zi’s blog had said about Master Ji’s Golden Chicken: _Simple, recognizable comfort food. Familiar flavors, executed to perfection._

And how. 

“Oh…” Jack hardly realized that a moan escaped him upon the first mouthful, the umami from the soy sauce and sesame oil flawlessly accented by the piquant zest of Thai basil and sake. Beneath the first layer of flavor Jack discerned solid undertones of garlic, the tang of ginger, and sharp stab of heat from Sichuan pepper. No wonder Thursdays were chicken days, Jack thought. Zhao Zi sometimes gave into hyperbole on his blog, but he had not been exaggerating when he had written ‘perfection.’ 

“Mmmm,” Jack moaned again, shoving another spoonful into his mouth, his eyes rolling upward as he closed them, floating blissfully in the startling complexity that Mr. Ji had imparted to the humble recipe. 

It wasn’t until he had finished that it occurred to him that he had fed Mr. Ji too. He looked up from his now-empty styrofoam box to see Ji standing opposite him with a similarly empty plate. All the anger and ire that Jack had felt swirling around him for all those hours over lunch had dissipated, and he was sniffling. 

Jack blinked, taken aback. Was Mr. Ji crying? Oh my. Those chipotles weren’t that spicy.

Mr. Ji wiped at his eyes. “So you’re doing all of this just for that kid, huh?” he asked.

Jack paused and then gestured at his truck, letting the name do all the talking.

Ji sighed. “I can taste how much you love him.”

Oh. It had never occurred to Jack that this might be discernible through his food itself, and not just the fact that he was doing the cooking. He beamed. “That’s probably an understatement.”

“It is one heck of an understatement,” Ji agreed.

Jack’s smiled widened.

“Damn,” Ji swore and then sighed, his shoulders sagged. “You got me beat.” 

“No,” Jack protested quickly. “You’re actually the better chef.”

Ji grinned wryly. “That’s just experience and practice. I’ve got twenty years on you. You’ll get to where I am eventually.”

Jack supposed that might be true; he didn’t foresee a change of plans anytime soon—being Zhao Zi’s househusband from here until the end of time didn’t seem like a bad way to live out the rest of his days.

“You can have Thursdays from now on,” Ji concede. “I’ll go find somewhere else.”

“But I don’t want Thursdays,” Jack said. “And Zhao Zi likes your food. He’d be upset if you found another Thursday haunt.”

Mr. Ji considered this.

“And without me, who’s gonna keep you on your toes?”

Ji snorted. “There’s plenty of competition out there in the food truck world. Don’t need you for that. Unless you wanna finally play in the big leagues.”

And then it was Jack’s turn to consider. He shrugged. “Never say never,” which was what he’d learned, since he’d found himself willing to exchange a lucrative career in mercenary espionage for the quiet bliss of housework and domesticity.

But for now, he had someone’s afternoon snack to deliver before it got cold. He waved a casual goodbye to Master Ji and his Golden Chicken truck as he headed into the station. 

“Jack!” 

Zhao Zi was gathered around a breakout table with Jun Wei and Yu Qi, but quickly crossed the floor to meet Jack. “Those are my favorite! How did you know I was peckish?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with the affection and delight spreading across his features. 

“I just knew,” Jack replied simply, and handed his boyfriend his bao.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks, as always, to my betas, [Naye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naye) and [Xparrot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xparrot), without whom this series wouldn't nearly read as smoothly or as well as it does. They provide the best edits and most amazing encouragement. 
> 
> If you’re wondering about the names of the food trucks in Chinese, Jack’s is 我寶寶的包 (wǒ bǎobǎo de bāo), which is a pun on 寶寶 (bǎobǎo), meaning “babe” or “baby” as a term of endearment, and 包 (bāo), as in the popular Chinese [meat-filled bun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baozi). (Jack’s bao are actually the slightly deconstructed [割包 guàbāo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gua_bao), because they’re logistically easier to manage in the setting of a food truck.) Mr. Ji’s truck is called 機師金雞 (jī shī jīn jī), which is a pun on the fact that his last name (機) is a homophone (jī) for the word for chicken (雞). These are both inordinately silly food truck names, and I couldn’t help myself when naming them. (Sorry, not sorry.)
> 
> This series isn’t actually set in the same continuity as the epilogues in the novelization, but I did steal from it the idea that Jack has a food cart (in my case, a small VW Bus) so he can feed Zhao Zi extra indulgent food at work.
> 
> I am now hanging out on Twitter, which seems to be where some of you HIStory3圈套 fan folks seem to hang out! Come find me @buttonthemdown if you want to fan over Jack and Zhao Zi with me!


End file.
